To paraphrase an IO9 commentor, the dual Nebula/Hugo choice for Frederik Pohl’s SF novel, Gateway, was simply dreadful…in the sense of instilling deep dread in the reader, as any horror writer would wish to do. Pohl won three Hugos, in successive years. That says it all, doesn’t it? Oh, and another Hugo and three Nebulas, […]

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Jake here. I founded Flash Fiction Online in December of 2007. Flash fiction itself was just gaining steam, and it looked like there was an opportunity for a professional market dedicated to flash. I’m happy that we — me, yes, but alongside a team of volunteers who rallied around the concept — created that market […]

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This is the real me: I am the kin of armchairs and baseboards and clever lighting. I am indistinguishable from the scenery. Tonight, I am wallpaper, deep crimson with a black scrollwork pattern. I am dark but for the single incandescent lamp to my right. I am the backmost corner of a posh tavern on […]

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I found the piece of the alien ship out back, right on the marsh edge. I was out fishing, or least I was supposed to be, but mostly I was “lollygagging and woolgathering,” Pa would say. Pa don’t approve of gathering wool, nor gagging no lollies, either. He says a girl my age ought to […]

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Near the end of his fifteenth orbit as Greenland slipped by noiselessly below, he made the routine measurements that tested the operation of his space capsule and checked the automatic instruments which would transmit their stored data to Earth on his next pass over Control. Everything normal; all mechanical devices were operating perfectly. This information […]

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That July issue? Yeah, I meant August. But with this issue, we move from a mid-monthly schedule back to a first-of-the-month schedule, which seems to suit readers and publishers somewhat better than our previous pattern. We’ve tried to make sure it was worth the wait, though. We have some great stories lined up for you, […]

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His love is alchemy; his touch transmutes. I turn to gold at his faintest glance. “Do I have a mother?” he asks me. He is precocious. Every father thinks his son is special, but I know. His eyelashes are so fine they are almost transparent. His skin is the color of ripe wheat. He is […]

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I’ve been lugging it around for years… rolled up and stuffed in my gym bag… tucked in the hollows of old sneakers kept under the bed. For the longest time I “hid” it in my sock drawer wrapped in plastic like an unopened 3-pack. There were times throughout my life I’d take it out, unfurl […]

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Jude and Immogen float in their ship’s sensorium, holding hands and viewing the Schwarzschild radius stamped on the star field before them. The ring of detoured light surrounds a profound blackness that whispers faintly with Hawking radiation. Jude has pondered this quantum flaw in relativity for a long time, as he has pondered death and […]

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Away up in the heart of the Allegheny mountains, in Pocahontas county, West Virginia, is a beautiful little valley through which flows the east fork of the Greenbrier river. At a point where the valley road intersects the old Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike, a famous thoroughfare in its day, is a post office in a […]